Explication of "Annabel Lee" 


Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" was written in 1849, the year of his death. Most people agree that Poe wrote this poem about his departed wife, Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis two years earlier. Some critics, however, contend that in the seventh line of the poem he states, "I was a child and she was a child," and he certainly was no child in 1836 at twenty-seven when he married his thirteen-year-old bride. Maybe the poem is about an earlier love, or perhaps it is purely fictional, but addressing Annabel Lee as his "life and [his] bride" in line thirty-eight and writing it two years after his beloved young wife's death, it is seems logical that it is indeed written about her and is simply embellished with a bit of poetic license. 

In this poem, Poe writes primarily with a combination of iambic and anapestic feet, alternating between tetrameter and trimeter. The word "chilling," however, is permitted in both places it is used, lines fifteen and twenty-five, to retain its jarring trochaic meter (one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable). This is done most probably to utilize the provoking effect of that meter; the death of the speaker's loved one disturbs the rhythm of the poem and startles the reader. End rhyme in the poem alternates lines with a few variations and bears little significance; the repeated rhyming words are: "Lee," "sea," "me," and "we." 

In "Annabel Lee" the speaker argues in lines eleven and twelve that the angels were jealous of the happy couple: "the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me." The envious angels, he insists, caused the wind to chill his bride and seize her life. However, he contends, their love, stronger than the love of the older or wiser couples, can never be conquered: 

And neither the angles in heaven above, 
Nor the demons down under the sea, 

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. (lines 33-36) 

The poem's diction immerses the reader into the speaker's fantasy-like realm of love shared with his bride. He begins the poem with the first two lines, "It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea," much like the "once upon a time, in a faraway land" of fairytales. The couple lived with no other thought than to love one another and "loved with a love that was more than love" (9). The speaker maintains that this world of reverie remains even after the death of his bride: 

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee (33-6). 

The diction of the poem also reinforces the speaker's argument. By addressing Annabel Lee as a "maiden" in lines three and five rather than simply as a "woman," he draws images of purity and innocence to the reader's mind. In line twenty-one, alliteration of "H's" in the phrase "half so happy in heaven" makes a harsh sound, almost as that of a rebuke; both the words of the speaker and the voice of the reader shun the angels for their avariciousness. While end rhyme bears little importance, internal rhyme is more expressive. The internal rhyme of "chilling and killing" in line twenty-five emphasizes the abrupt end of his love's life; that of "ever dissever" in line thirty-one stresses the longevity of their affections. 

The image invoked by this poem is of enduring love. Both this everlasting love and the conclusion of the poem leave the speaker lying on the grave of his departed wife: 

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride, 

In the sepulchre there by the sea, 

In her tomb by the sounding sea (37-41).